The stakes and hopes are high for a new international agreement coming out of the U.N. climate summit in Paris, which started today. Yet the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change reported in October that the combined effect of carbon-reduction pledges promised by the participating nations will fall far short of the goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees centigrade over pre-industrial times.

Noah Deich

Noah Deich, who earned his MBA from the Haas School of Business this year, is founder and executive director of the Center for Carbon Removal (CCR) — a new non-profit dedicated to accelerating the development of carbon removal solutions — at UC Berkeley’s Energy and Climate Institute.

The 2015 grad plans to be in Paris during the summit, COP21, “to see how the conversation at both the official and unofficial events reflects the growing importance of carbon removal solutions” capable of cleaning up excess carbon dioxide that has already accumulated in the atmosphere, he writes on the CCR website.

Carbon removal, via technologies like carbon capture and storage, and soil carbon sequestration, “appears to be quite under the radar in the official conversation at COP21,” he says.

“But there are lots of other climate-related events happening in Paris over the coming two weeks,” Deich notes, including a panel discussion hosted by the NGO Bellona, where he is slated to speak.

Deich is posting updates from Paris via his Twitter handle @TheCarbonSink, as well as the blog of the Center for Carbon Renewal. Read his first blog post, “Why I’m going to COP21.”